Bottle breaker



Search Reon March 1940. G. H. SURPRENANT in AL 2,194,957

BOTTLE BREAKER Filnd Sept. 18, 1937 OR DISINTEGRATION 99 Patented Mar. 26, 1940 UNITED STATES PATENT OFFICE BOTTLE BREAKER Application September 18, 1937, Serial No. 164,532

Claims.

Our invention relates to bottle breakers and has particular reference to a device which may be simply constructed and operated to break or destroy bottles to prevent refilling thereof.

Bottles which are employed to contain certain commodities, such as spirituous liquors, are required to be broken, destroyed or otherwise rendered impossible of refilling or reuse thereof, and considerable difficulty is encountered in so destroying such bottles without danger of injury to persons handling the bottles and without the creation of considerable undesirable noise and mess at the place of destruction. Particularly in view of the fact that it is frequently necessary that bottles of this character must be destroyed instantly upon removal of the contents, such as at bars, in restaurants and the like, the noise created by the breaking or destruction of the botties would be extremely annoying while the destruction of the bottles at the bar or other locations in which food or drinks are being served, create considerable danger of contamination of foods or drinks by bits of glass which might be thrown or projected during the breaking of the bottles.

It is therefore an object of our invention to provide a device for breaking or destroying bottles which may be located immediately at the point at which the contents of the bottles are removed and which will break or destroy the bottle without danger of flying bits of glass and substantially Without noise.

Another object of our invention is to provide a bottle breaker of the character set forth which may be readily and inexpensively manufactured, requiring no moving parts and requiring no care or maintenance during its life.

Another object of our invention is to provide a bottle breaker comprising essentially a mandrel which may be secured solidly to a wall or article of furniture adapted to have the neck of the bottl placed thereon so that by a simple twisting motion of the bottle, the neck of the bottle will be instantly destroyed.

Another object of our invention is to provide a bottle breaker of the character set forth in the preceding paragraph, in which the mandrel is surrounded by a guard, which will project a sufficient distance along the bottle to exceed the length of the bottle or neck portion thereof engaged by the mandrel to prevent any bits of the glass from being projected into dangerous localities during the breaking process.

Another object of our invention is to provide a bottle breaker of the character set forth wherein a mandrel is provided with one or more knife-like edges adapted to engage the interior of the neck of a bottle and to confine the lines of breakage of the bottle to substantially predetermined lines or locations.

Other objects and advantages of our invention will be apparent from a study of the following specifications, read in connection with the accompanying drawing, wherein Fig. 1 is a perspective view of a bottle breaker constructed in accordance with our invention; and

Fig. 2 is a vertical sectional view taken through a bottle breaker constructed in accordance with our invention, the section being taken along lines II-1I of Fig. 1.

Referring to the drawing, we have illustrated a bottle breaker comprising a mandrel or arbor I adapted to be secured to a wall or other article of furniture to extend along a line normal to the surface of the wall or article of furniture, the arbor I being preferably mounted so as to project in a horizontal direction as by securing the same to a suitable base 2 which may be solid or may be constructed as a substantially ring-like base flange 3, the arbor being supported substantially concentric therewith as upon spider legs 4, 5 and 6.

By referring to Fig. 2, it will be observed that the rear surface of the base flange 3 and the rear surfaces of the spider legs 6 extend in a single plane so that the arbor, base flange and legs may be readily secured flat against a wall surface or the surface of a bar or other article of furniture by merely passing attaching screws 1 through suitable openings 8 formed in the base flange 3 or in radially extending ears 9 projecting therefrom, three of such ears being illustrated in the form of the device shown herein.

For simplicity of construction and economy of manufacture, the arbor I, legs 4-5-6 and base flange 3 may be cast integrally, the ears 9 and screw openings 8 being formed in the single casting operation.

The arbor or mandrel I may be provided with any desired shape though we prefer that the same be tapered from its junction with the legs 4-5-6 and have a polygonal cross section to provide a plurality of relatively sharp corners or edges IO, N and I2. In the form of the device illustrated herein, the mandrel l is illustrated as a three sided pyramid, each of the sides being substantially the same size and shape and providing three edges Ill-l l-l2 so that by placing the neck 13 of a bottle M to be broken upon the arbor or mandrel l, the interior of the neck I3 will be engaged at three separated points by the mandrel I. Thus by merely pressing the neck of the bottle upon the mandrel until it is solidly seated thereon, and then moving the bottle laterally in any direction, the edges of the mandrel I will cause the immediate cracking of the bottle neck, and removing at least a portion of the bottle neck sufficient to prevent the reuse of the bottle for commercial purposes.

When the bottle is broken in this manner it is effectively destroyed against further use though during the breaking there is little or no noise produced, a slight cracking noise being produced which is so soft as to be unobjectionable.

While this manner of cracking or breaking the neck of the bottle produces little or no chipping of the glass, it may be desirable to provide a guard surrounding that portion of the bottle to be broken, such as is indicated at l5 as comprising an annular guard member extending forwardly from the base flange 3 to a point beyond the outermost limit of the mandrel or arbor I, the guard member l5 being preferably in the shape of the major portion of a sector of a hollow cylinder providing a discharge opening l6 which will be located at the bottom of the bottle breaker when the same is attached to a wall or article of furniture, as indicated in Fig. 1. Thus chips or broken parts of the bottle will fall downwardly through the opening l6 into a suitable box or other receptacle which may be suspended immediately below the opening I6, as by providing elongated screws l! on the two bottom ears 9 of the flange 3 from which a receptacle may be hung. This receptacle may also be used to receive the unbroken portion of the bottle l4.

While we have illustrated the flange 15 as being formed integrally with the base flange 3 and mandrel l as by a single casting operation, it will be apparent to those skilled in the art that if desired the guard I5 may be made as a separate piece attached to the base 2.

While we have shown and described the preferred embodiment of our invention, we do not desire to be limited to any of the details of construction shown or described herein, except as defined in the appended claims.

We claim:

1. A structure for shattering the neck portion of a bottle, comprising a substantially flat base for support upon a plane supporting surface, an immovable tapering finger-like cleavage element upon which the neck of a bottle may be impinged extending outwardly from said base and formed with decreasing but generally similar cross sections, and a guard member similarly outwardly extending from said base and disposed about said cleavage element and spaced therefrom, whereby upon the shattering of the impinged bottle neck fragments of glass near the base may be restrained by the guard,

2. A structure for shattering the neck portion of a bottle, comprising a, substantially flat base for support upon a plane supporting surface, an immovable tapering finger-like cleavage element upon which the neck of a bottle may be impinged extending outwardly from said base and formed with decreasing but generally similar cross sections, and a, generally circular guard member similarly extending outwardly from said base and disposed about said cleavage element and spaced therefrom, whereby upon the shattering of said impinged bottle neck fragments of glass near the base may be restrained by the guard.

3. A structure for shattering the neck portion of a bottle, comprising a substantially flat base for support upon a plane supporting surface, an immovable tapering finger-like cleavage element upon which the neck of a bottle may be impinged extending outwardly from said base and formed with decreasing but generally similar triangular cross sections, and a guard member similarly outwardly extending from said base and disposed about said cleavage element and spaced there from, whereby upon the shattering of the impinged bottle neck fragments of glass near the base may be restrained by the guard.

4. A structure for shattering the neck portion of a bottle, comprising a flat base, means to attach the base to a plane supporting surface, an immovable tapering finger-like cleavage element upon which the neck of a bottle may be impinged, said element being, integral with and extending outwardly from the center of said base and formed with decreasing but generally similar cross sections, and a generally circular guard member spaced from and concentric with said cleavage element and similarly outwardly extending from said base, the surface of said guard member formed with an opening extending from an outwardly extending portion inward toward said base; whereby upon shattering of the impinged bottle neck, fragments of glass may be restrained by the guard but allowed to pass through the opening.

5. A structure for shattering the neck portion of a bottle, comprising a fiat base, means to attach the base to a plane supporting surface, an immovable tapering finger-like cleavage element upon which the neck of a bottle may be impinged, said element being integral with and extending outwardly from the center of said base and formed with decreasing but generally similar cross sections, and a generally circular guard member spaced from and concentric with said cleavage element and similarly outwardly extending from said base; whereby upon the shattering of the impinged bottle neck, fragments of glass near the base may be restrained by the guard,

GERALD H. SURPRENANT. CHARLES GILLEAN. JOHN LOPRICH. 

